Any ideas on how they are produced commercially?

Judith in England wrote:

Any ideas on how they are produced commercially?

IIRC, the inbred parent lines have at least the female parent with sterile
pollen, so only the _other_ parent can pollinate it and produce seed. I
believe some are still done by hand pollination; these are the really
pricey ones!
I haven't worried too much about all that, because I don't demand absolute
uniformity in the crop or harvest time, and I save my own seeds wherever I
can.


--
Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic
Zone 5/4 in upstate New York, 1420' elevation. NY WO G

On Sat, 28 Feb 2015 11:51:22 -0500, Gary Woods
wrote:

Judith in England wrote:

Any ideas on how they are produced commercially?

IIRC, the inbred parent lines have at least the female parent with sterile
pollen, so only the _other_ parent can pollinate it and produce seed. I
believe some are still done by hand pollination; these are the really
pricey ones!
I haven't worried too much about all that, because I don't demand absolute
uniformity in the crop or harvest time, and I save my own seeds wherever I
can.


But if you really like a particular tomato say, and save some seeds from an F1
hybrid - surely the new plant will not be the true tomato which you like?

Judith in England wrote:

But if you really like a particular tomato say, and save some seeds from an F1
hybrid - surely the new plant will not be the true tomato which you like?
Which is the reason for growing open pollinated types; there's a project in
the U.S. (and Australia, IIRC) to produce dwarf tomato stock crossed with
some popular heirlooms. They've already got some stable breeding lines of
small but productive "heirloom" tomatos.
Look up "Tomatoville."

--
Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic
Zone 5/4 in upstate New York, 1420' elevation. NY WO G

On Sat, 28 Feb 2015 22:07:53 -0500, Gary Woods
wrote:

Judith in England wrote:

But if you really like a particular tomato say, and save some seeds from an F1
hybrid - surely the new plant will not be the true tomato which you like?
Which is the reason for growing open pollinated types; there's a project in
the U.S. (and Australia, IIRC) to produce dwarf tomato stock crossed with
some popular heirlooms. They've already got some stable breeding lines of
small but productive "heirloom" tomatos.
Look up "Tomatoville."


Cheers: awesome website !

I'll have no reason to ask tomato questions in here !

Judith in England wrote:

Cheers: awesome website !

I'll have no reason to ask tomato questions in here !

The leader of that operation spoke a couple of years ago at the annual Seed
Saver's Exchange camput convention in Iowa. As you see from the web site,
he's got a lot of volunteers growing the crosses produced, because when you
toss the genetic dice it takes a number of ever-expanding generations to
see what you've done.

--
Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic
Zone 5/4 in upstate New York, 1420' elevation. NY WO G